Wick
by PoppyPapillon
Summary: She screamed for help again, and he was sure, sure that he had never heard such an awful sound in his life.


Bobby scowled deeply as he made his way out of the building.

They'd been questioning Melvin Klee for over three hours. Klee fit the profile, damn it, this was the _guy_ – but he wouldn't budge on his alibi. He kept playing the old man card, as if old men had never committed murder. Bobby had grown angrier and angrier as time had passed, until he'd erupted. All he could remember now was the sound of his fist pounding the table and the feel of Eames' hands on his shoulders.

"Take a walk," she'd said, firmly. "Go. Go buy me a scone or something. We'll be here when you get back."

At a fast clip, he made his way down the sidewalk, the cold wind cutting neatly through the gaps in his coat. Glancing around, he muttered an obscenity, directed at Eames. It felt good, so he did it again, a little louder. She was in the interrogation room at that moment, _alone_, with the guy who'd raped and murdered ten women so far. Ten women that they knew of, anyway. And he was off on a scone run.

He stomped to the bakery two blocks over. There was a closer one, but if she wanted a scone so damned badly, he might as well buy one from the better place.

"Give me a lemon poppy scone," he told the clerk, raising his voice over the sound of dueling sirens blaring down the street. Did a full minute ever pass in this city without sirens piercing the air? "And, uh... a Boston cream donut." No doubt the donut would make Eames frown, but leaving an interrogation made _him_ frown, so hey. Tit for tat.

Still, he found himself downing the pastry quickly as he walked back to One Police Plaza. It wasn't because she'd disapprove of his choice, no no. It was because he was _hungry. _And when a big glob of cream fell onto the front of his coat, he ran back for wet napkins because of the cost of _dry cleaning_, not because he wanted to hide the stain from her.

Scones. Since when did Eames eat scones, anyway? Grudgingly, he added it to his mental list of Eames trivia. It was always unsettling when a new tidbit of information didn't match the profile he'd spent years creating. If he'd never known her to eat scones, then what else was she hiding?

He forcibly pushed the image of a secret, handsome boyfriend out of his head (not for the first time, or the second, or the hundredth) and turned the corner, only to stop short in surprise. There was a line of fire engines outside the precinct. Cocking an eye as he swallowed the last mouthful of donut, he caught sight of an old coworker in the crowd. They nodded to each other as Bobby approached.

"Hey, Goren. You believe all this?"

"What's going on?"

The sergeant shook his head. "Smells like arson to me. Fire broke out on six."

"Bad one?"

"That's what they're saying. Luckily the floor was empty at the time."

Bobby nodded, and stared at the smoke that was beginning to haze up the sixth story windows. "Wait, the floor was empty?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I left ten minutes ago, and Eames was on six, interrogating a suspect."

The sergeant blinked at him. "The alarm must've gone off not long after you left the building, then. Maybe she'd finished up?"

"She said they'd be there when I got back." Unease began to twine itself around Bobby's spine. "You haven't seen her?"

"No, man."

Bobby made his way through the crowd, searching in vain through a sea of people. _Damn her for being so short. _

"You seen Eames? Hey, anyone seen Eames?" Blank faces met his calls, and the feeling of dread tightened sharply. He caught sight of a prison guard, and hurried over. "Savitsky, you seen Eames?"

"Sure."

"You have? When?"

The guard shrugged. "Few hours ago. I brought Klee in for you to question, remember?"

"You haven't seen her since?"

"Nah, I'm sure she's around here somewhere."

"They cleared the floor, though? Everyone was accounted for?"

Savitsky nodded. "You folks were the only one using six tonight, and I told them you'd finished your interrogation 'bout ten, fifteen minutes ago."

"Finished?" Bobby frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, I mean..." Savitsky chuckled a little. "I saw you walk by me earlier. And I knew you'd never leave Eames alone in a room with that _maniac_. So yeah, I told them the floor was clear."

For a moment, time around them seemed to grind to a halt. Bobby felt his breathing stop, his heartbeat slow, his body freeze. He watched, numbly, as the little smile on Savitsky's face faded into something like horror.

"Wait, Goren, you don't mean she was still–"

But Bobby never heard the end of that sentence, never heard much of anything at all. He was running, sprinting, half-stumbling toward the building. A couple of fire fighters near the entrance held up their hands as he approached them, but he was too big and too fast to be stopped. Ducked past one, knocked the other clear off his feet. He grabbed an oxygen mask off an equipment table and strapped it onto his head as he entered the building.

Distantly, he heard shouting behind him. He headed for the back stairs, the ones that led up to the stairwell by their interrogation room. His feet felt like lead.

Up and up and up he climbed, taking the steps two or three at a time. His lungs were burning, and he wondered absently why he'd stopped working out. Probably because the consequences had seemed like _Look good naked _or _Look so-so naked_, not _Eames lives _or _Eames dies because you can't get your fat ass up the stairs in time. _There was no need to check the floor numbers; halfway up the fifth stairwell, the stink of smoke and sulfur became nearly overwhelming. He stopped briefly outside the door to six, testing the knob for heat before pulling the door open.

Hell. That's what it looked like; hell.

The hallway was dark, but for the flashing lights of the fire alarm and, of course, the blaze itself. Everything was burning too brightly – _could be a chemical fire, _Bobby the Investigator hypothesized. _Almost certainly arson._ The sprinkler system was doing its best, but the fire raged on. He caught sight of several fire fighters down the hall to the left, battling the flames. His goal lay in the opposite direction, so he took off to the right. Turned a corner, and there was the interrogation room.

And there was the door.

And there, wedged in front of the door, was a heavy, blazing file cabinet.

His mind would store the details of the scene for later, no doubt. His body was too busy hurtling itself toward the cabinet.

"Eames?" His voice was muffled by the oxygen mask. "Eames?"

He froze as he heard the faint sound of her yelling for help, from inside the room.

"Jesus... Eames!"

The cabinet had been doused in some sort of accelerant. He braced his hands against a clear area on the side, and pushed hard. It didn't budge. He shoved it harder. Gave a little running start before throwing a football shoulder into it. Nothing.

"Somebody!" Eames' voice sounded panicked through the door. "Somebody, please, help!"

"I'm coming! I'm here, I'm–" He crashed into the cabinet again. "Just – I'm..." The cabinet didn't even wobble. He tried to tilt it forward, away from the door. He tried twisting, pushing, pulling. Tried from the top, the bottom, the back. "Just hold on, I'm–"

She screamed for help again, and he was sure, _sure _that he had never heard such an awful sound in his life. That was true for precisely five seconds, after which he learned that there was a far more terrifying noise:

Silence.

"Eames?" He banged the top of the door with his fist. "Eames? Can you hear me?" There was no response.

He pictured Klee's crime scenes. The way the victims' bodies would lie splayed across the ground, their bodies ravaged, expressions of terror etched indelibly on their faces.

He pictured the victims of arson he'd seen over the years. The raw, bleeding fingers that had tried to claw their way to air. The charred flesh, flaking away from the bones.

He pictured Eames. The way she'd looked on the way to lunch last week, when a gust of wind off Amsterdam caught her hair a certain way, and she'd seemed startled and a little refreshed. They'd been talking about nothing, about how she was thinking about moving to a safer neighborhood. He'd been encouraging, offering his services as a free mover, but she'd just shaken her head._ Too much of a pain, _she'd said. _All that packing, all that heavy stuff. I mean, imagine moving my bookshelves. _He'd just laughed and said, _I could take the books out first._

_Right._

_Shit._

He moved to the front of the file cabinets. Opened the drawers one by one, dumping piles and piles of files on the rapidly flooding floor and remembering, oddly, how she used to say paperwork would end up killing her one day.

Finally he'd emptied out enough drawers, and he threw his weight against the side of the cabinet again. It slowly slid two inches across the floor. He pressed his back against it and shoved it harder, his quads burning as he leaned back as hard as he could. It slid further. "Coming, Eames," he grunted out, dizzy from the exertion. "I'm... coming..." He could hear a fire fighter running toward him. "Almost... there..." He managed to shove it another inch, and the door was clear. Holding his breath, he pulled open the door.

Eames was on top of Klee. At first, Bobby had the insane thought that she was in the process of strangling him – until he realized she was performing chest compressions. She turned and saw him, and bellowed, "Where the hell have _you _been?"

The fire fighter shoved his way past him before he could come up with a suitable response. It was strange; things suddenly seemed to move very fast around them. A stretcher appeared and paramedics loaded Klee, who appeared to have suffered a heart attack, onto it. Flame-retardant blankets were wrapped around Bobby and Eames, and they were ushered downstairs. Through it all, though, he just stared at her face. Her lovely, lovely face, clenched with worry and stress. He ached to kiss every last line.

They made it to the ground floor, where they dropped the blankets and a waiting Ross chewed Bobby out for risking his life yet again. He heard little of it, and then they were free. Walking down the sidewalk together, breathing clean air – well, clean as it got in the city – and miraculously unharmed.

"That was something else," she said. "My hands won't stop shaking."

"My apartment's two blocks away."

"Do you have tea?"

"Yeah. And liquor."

"Even better."

They walked together in silence. When they reached his apartment, he held the door open for her. "It was probably a victim's family member," she said as she passed him.

"What?"

"The arsonist. Who else would block the door to the interrogation room before setting the fire? Someone was trying to kill Klee. They probably thought he was in the room alone. Had to have been someone who was impatient with our progress. I'm thinking it was Anna Woburn's father, or maybe Franny Heinrich's brother."

God help him, but he didn't even care at the moment. Eames was here. Alive, and _here. _He grabbed two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, and pulled the caps off both. "Oh," he said, suddenly. "Here." He drew a battered paper bag out of his coat pocket and handed it to her.

"What's this?"

"The scone you wanted."

Eames scoffed a little, tossing the bag on the counter. "I was just trying to get you to go blow off some steam, Goren, I don't even _like_ scones–"

She might have had more to say, but suddenly he had her up against the wall, and was kissing her so fiercely he thought his heart might break. She tasted of smoke and redemption and _Eames, _and her arms were twining around him, her short fingernails scratching lightly at his scalp, and he could have died in that moment and been completely happy.

When they finally pulled apart, she was attempting to frown, though her smile was sabotaging the attempt. "You ate a Boston cream donut."

"I did," he said, breathlessly.

"I told you to stop eating those. They're not good for you."

The word _Love _bubbled up from inside him, traveled up into his mouth and he couldn't, wouldn't say it yet, so he filled his mouth with hers instead.

"I'm serious," she laughed against his lips.

"Love," he whispered, the word escaping before his tongue could catch it.

She drew a shaky breath, and traced his lips with her fingertips. "Love."


End file.
